It's Kirk and Keira, but not as we know them: Chris Pine breathes refreshing new life to the latest instalment of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series

Not only does Sir Kenneth Branagh direct and play the villain; and not only does Keira Knightley pout beautifully as the love interest; but our hero begins the film as a student at the London School Of Economics.

This is a splendidly British set of attributes, yet Branagh plays a Russian, Knightley an American, and our hero soon swaps the LSE for another set of initial letters: the CIA.

This is the fifth screen adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels, this time with Captain Kirk himself, Chris Pine, beamed into the role of the shadowy agency’s resident genius, as an undercover man on Wall Street.

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New lead: Star Trek star Chris Pine is refreshing as the lead character in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Ryan might know his derivatives from his equities, but nothing is as derivative as the film. The edgy banter between him and Branagh’s villain rather evokes James Bond and Blofeld.

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And yet it is entertaining enough, with Pine breathing refreshing new life into a character previously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford (twice) and Ben Affleck.

I preferred the Ford vehicles — Patriot Games, and Clear And Present Danger — but it’s nice to see Knightley in Russia enjoying herself in a thriller (her first) after the Tolstoyan troubles of Anna Karenina.